Moon on A String
by little.miss.lovely
Summary: Harry has trouble getting to sleep during the nights. Insomnia, he thinks they call it. So what does he do? "He thinks. Ponders. Wonders, really." Harry Potter x Luna Lovegood. Sixth Year, yet no spoilers for that book. No dialouge. Review well.


**DISCLAIMER:** I do not own Harry Potter in any way or form, unless you count the three posters in my room. I have nothing to do with J.K. Rowling's plot, I mean look at the ship, I mean, yea. All in all, I am not Rowling and I don't own anything but the plot to this oneshot. Oh, but if I did own Harry Potter, it would be hella amazing. I mean just Harry, by the way. Ohh, boy, I'd censored for mature content. Mmhmm.

**Warnings:** Mild cursing, Narrator goofiness, Religious references

* * *

Moon on A String  
**A Harry Potter One-shot by: little.miss.lovely**

He was sitting at the bottom part of his bed, staring out the nearest window. It was nighttime now. The only source of light was the moon, that reflected and shimmered off the Black Lake and shown faintly on the ground. Everyone else was asleep right now, or should be. The only thing breaking the silence at this hour was the breathing/snoring of his roommates. Yet he was awake.

It has been like this for Harry for many weeks. At night, he would sit at the edge of his bed thinking, not going to sleep until the earily hours of morning, and on weekends until the sun begins to rise. And every day? He mainly sleeps or is in a state between conciousness and not. He's gotten a few detentions lately for his tendancy to doze off durning lessons. The harshest one though was a week ago when he fell asleep in the middle of making a potion for Professor Snape and he knocked into the cauldron when he feel to the stone floor, spilling the contents everywhere. Including the sleeve of his robes. He wasn't sure if there was a good or bad effect, but his wrist still itched on the place it spilled at.

The effect of his noctural habit, though, wasn't unseen or unnoticed. On the day he collapsed durning Potions, he was taken to the hosptial wing (after much convincing from Hermione, Ron, and other friends to him). Madame Pomfrey said that he had passed out from exhaustion; recommenation being to just get some sleep. But he couldn't do it. Not because he didn't want to; hell, he was tired as hell! He just couldn't. He thought it was called insomnia or something of the such.

His friends had noticed his apperance and tried to ask what was wrong. When he tried to assure them that he was fine, they didn't believe him. Apparently, he still had a bruised look under almost permanently droopy eyes. He always looked a little pale and blank, like he wasn't thinking anything at the moment and just existing. That's actually what he felt like he was doing during the days. There for no reason, not really feeling. Just because he was so damn tired.

He'd gotten very annoyed very quickly with them when they were saying he was acting so moody and drifty. He was not moody!! He proceeded to yell at them, and then apologize then yell again when they tried to make a point. What did they know? They weren't doctors. He was not acting moody.

If he was acting so irritable from lack of sleep then it should be made double by what he was thinking about over the night. During the times when he would just sit there existing, he would think. Ponder. Wonder, really. About what life would be like if he absolutely did not care.

Not like the 'Oh my gosh, life isn't worth living anymore. I think I'll just sit here until I die cause I just don't care and I feel so sorry for myself' type of people. Those people are annoying, with their big, long, annoying discribery sentences and whiny-girl attitudes. He thought it was kind of weak to be like that kind of person, especially if you announce it to the world for sympathy.

No, what he was think was what if all the pressure were gone. What would happen if he just decided to break free from anything that people thought of him and be himself? To not have the worry of being accepted.

Even though he was already pretty much accepted, he wanted it to be for the right reason though. Not for all the fame and crap that he's had to go through. Everyone seemed to think that he was like some valiant defender of everything good and righteous, getting the bad guy stumped at every turn without batting an eyelash. That thought, to him, actually sounded a bit fruity if he really thought about it for a while. He was thought to do no wrong or have no screw-ups.

On his good days, that is.

The bad ones were the worst. He was thought to be a sham of a person, gripping for attention like he had a neon arrow pointing at him that said 'This dude is the Boy-Who-Live, everyone! Give him attentions, for he is bored' or something like that. _That_ was a bit fruity as well. Actually this thought was introduced more last year during the time when Fudge insisted he was an attention whore and a bold-face liar. He didn't want the enormous praise on the good days, negative smack talk on the bad ones, or special treatment on **any** day.

Cause he **did** get special treatment. And that was the thing that annoyed him the most. A lot of the time, he got the sense that people would walk on eggshells around him. He noticed this more from Hermione and Ron, since he was around them more often and they knew more about his goings-on. They would filter their words to make sure he didn't fly off the handle from the truth in raw, _truth_ form. And the times when they **are** real with him, he's already in a pissy mood from the conversation, so he DOES fly off the handle. He gets treated delicately by most, too. Last year was the worst for this.

When he thought about it, it would've been better to have been told that there was a prophecy about himself and Voldemort a few years ago. At least after the horrible Third Task in the Tournament. It could've saved time, grief, and most importantly, a life.

Harry's heart grips everytime he thinks about his late-Godfather. He still feels so responsible for his death. He just **had** to go and lead his friends on a wild 'rescue' chase to the Ministry of Magic, only to find he wasn't really there. Then, he did come to save Harry and got murdered in the process. If he just would've listened... But then again, he didn't really know at the time. The dream had told him that Sirius was there, getting tourtured by Voldemort. But if he would've just learned how to do Occulmency correctly!...

The battle always wages in his head about whether he was the one who caused his Godfather's death or not. And the "You did it." side was really more louder and persuasive.

Harry looked upper on the window, diverting his gaze from the glowing, calm lake. He scanned the pitch black sky, seeing one or two stars on the cloudless canvas. He looked on and saw the moon in the sky. It wasn't completely full, but getting there. On this night, the moon was shining perticuiarly bright in the sky.

Harry's thoughts wander back to the thoughts of binding nature of acceptance and defying that for freedom, in a sense.

When he thought about it that way, he began think about Luna Lovegood. _She_ was someone who seemed have that kind of freedom. Well, of course she did. Everyone called her 'Loony' and people stole her things for the hell of it; how is that "accepted" for you?

Harry scowled as he thought this. He didn't think Luna was loony as they so fondly discribed her. She was just different than everyone else. Is that wrong to be? She had her own set of beliefs and her own thoughts on things. It's like she's white amoung dark (and kinda literally from her very blonde hair), like a smile amoung frowns, like... a Christian amoung atheists? Not that that's what everyone was. Do wizards know of that religion?

But that's almost like what she was. With her belief of the unproven and full acceptance based on faith alone, wouldn't she be like the Christian? Just imagine one, thrown into a room full of hardcore atheists and trying to tell them of her beilef. They would most likely laugh at her or get angry and challenge her to proving herself. That Christian would be delusional, "loony" to them, right?

Luna isn't down-trodden by those who laugh and tell her she's crazy for believing in 'nargles' and 'blibbering humdingers'. She doesn't care about the nickname she was given, though she knows that it exists. No one takes the time to know her enough to get past it; she didn't get friends until just last year.

When you actually spend time with Luna you see that she is a thoughtful, honest, brave, loyal, witty and intelligent (well, she wasn't in Ravenclaw for no reason) individual, with even more adjectives that were just too complex to get into. With 'individual' being an important word. She was herself and no one else. But everyone else saw her as an odditity, unnatural.

Harry then felt anger at the human race in general right then. They say to encourage orginiality and individuality, to accept all thoughts and to have an opened mind and an opened heart. And some would say that they do this. But then when the opportunity to befriend one of this individual people, to have an"opened mind and opened heart", they decide to mock them and think of them as crazy. They think you're weird if you're not just like them. You can't think abstractly or complexly, without the threat of being looked at queerly.

He's realized that he values her a lot. She can comfort him when no other person can. She can calm him down, make him smile. She was probably a closer friend to him now than Ron or Hermione were. Not better or most important probably, definately in the top five of those though, but closer. She actually understood him better in a little over a year than his two best friends did in about six.

Harry thought that Luna could be one to emulate, if you wanted to be content in your life. Don't listen to what other people say when they talk about you, be your own person, be a good and honest person, and don't compromise your beliefs or yourself to fit others' molds of what a person should be.

But if Harry were to tell everyone this-- that Loony Luna Lovegood-- was all of this other beyond the surface, they'd laugh and mock him as well. If he told them all his complex and deep thought about during his sleepless nights, they'd say that he were crazy and needed to get his head screwed back in straight. But Harry was sure he was in his right mind. Maybe that was what he needed to do. Just grow closer to Luna and figure out how to be a little bit more like her. Isn't it said that to beware of the company you keep or you'll end up just like them?

As Harry looked at the nearly full moon, he thought even deeper about Luna, if it were possible. What if Luna were like the moon? The moon has a dark side of it that doesn't show to the light. What if Luna had a side that nobody knew about? Like, what is she actually idid/i care what others said about her and it hurt her a lot. Her serene and absentminded nature was a mask to the world that the words do hurt. Harry didn't think so though. I'm sure that if it did matter to her so much, that she would've broken under pressure before now.

That thought sent Harry in a downward spiral of sadness. He didn't want to think of that. He didn't want to lose the wide-eyed, innocent Luna that he knew her as. It would hurt his heart too much and make him just not believe in this world any longer. If they've broken her, then what hope to we truely have?

The more he looked at the moon, the more it reminded him of the color of her eyes. The light that shown was a slivery grey that could light an entire room easily, the whole Great Hall if it wanted it. It was almost like someone had taken the moon on a string and pulled it down to earth, and placed it in her eyes. Like God had distinctly made her eyes this way so Harry could think of them at this very moment.

He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the post we was leaning against. He saw her image in his head as clearly as if someone had pasted a photograph of her on the inside of his eyelids. She was smiling at him, her sliver eyes shining. He found himself grinning at the image. If this picture really was glued to his eyelids, and all he saw was her everytime he closed his eyes, he would have to find them and thank them greatly. _This_ he could live with.

Before he knew it, he had actually fallen asleep during the night for the first time in weeks.

* * *

  
**A/N:** I got inspriation for this from seeing the title "_Moon on A String_" on Forum, Writing, Title Grabbing thread, posted by Impetigo.

That as well as this quote from Mark Twain: "_Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody._"

I hope that you really liked this. I've been writing since I woke up at 4:30 in the morning. Tehe. Review, yo


End file.
